Customer Reviews

Hunted through Central Asia: On the Run from Lenin's Secret Police

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I thoroughly enjoyed Nazaroff's tales of being on the run from the Bolsheviks. He was a man of obvious intellectual talent and his many academic interests put him in contact with a wide variety of people that helped him on his long, difficult journey fleeing from the communists. There were times I couldn't put down his gripping stories of nearly getting caught or how he was even sealed up in an earthen wall to hide.

One thing other reviews mentioned, but that isn't mentioned at all on the back cover of the book is how much time Nazaroff spends detailing geological features of the areas he's travelling through and about the natural history of these areas. Some of it is interesting, but at times, it just becomes very tedious and I found it quite boring. When he's talking about how this stuff could reshape the economic future of areas, I found that interesting, but when he's simply describing finding mineral seams in rocks, I couldn't have cared less.

Overall, a very interesting read, but there are a few boring spots one has to plow through.

Paul Nazaroff was a Russian geologist, naturalist and sportsman living in Tashkent at the time of the Bolshevik revolution. He was arrested, gaoled and interrogated by the Cheka on suspicion of being involved in the counter-revolutionary movement in Russian Turkestan. Naturally he denied being a participant, although enough hints appear in this autobiographical work (covering 1918 to 1920) to make it plain that he was a ringleader.

Nazaroff managed to avoid the firing squad until Tashkent was liberated by the Whites. This liberation was short lived as the Soviet forces soon prevailed in a bloody counter-attack ending in mass executions. Nazaroff was forced into hiding amongst the native population - he spoke the local languages and had many contacts. The continuing search for him by the Bolsheviks forced him to move across Turkestan using forged papers and the aid of friends, all the time being in danger of being recognised. Nor did his troubles end upon crossing the Soviet border into China.

His account not only covers his struggle to survive, but also highlights the destructive and bestial behaviour of the revolutionaries towards people and property, noting how the resources of this rich province were being squandered as uneducated brutes were placed in positions of authority with no check on their powers. But this is only part of the tale as the geology and natural history encountered en route are related in great detail, perhaps too much for some readers, while the lives of the native peoples, the Sarts and the Kirghiz, are illustrated by one of the few Europeans to have spent months living amongst them as an outsider in a family home.

Little of political history will be found (other than an eyewitness account of the Bolsheviks in action and popular response) as the author was careful not to divulge confidences that even in 1932 had the potential to incite reprisals. What is presented is a panorama of a region that would remain closed to the outside world for seventy years as well as the courage and perseverance of the author. A brief epilogue by Peter Hopkirk details Nazaroff's later life.

This book, first published seventy years ago, is a harrowing account of the author's escape from the Soviet Cheka shortly after the Russian Revolution. He was the leader of a group of rebels in Turkestan, and as such was a much sought after prize for the Bolsheviks, who wanted to eliminate him and all other opponents of their regime. The story is told in such a low-key way, however, that often it becomes a mere travelogue rather than a tale of action. For all of that, the underlying terror comes through, and the danger and hardship which the author faced appears very real to the reader. In addition to the main story, this book is also full of geography, geology, zoology, botany and history. The author was certainly a well-rounded individual, in addition to being very, very brave. We don't see many heroes such as this man in our times, and it's rewarding to read that such people were more than wiling to risk everything to combat tyranny.

I was thrilled to read the book as a part of my delving into the history of Central Asia between the late 19th century and the early 20th century. It was a great compliment to The Spy Who Disappeared: Diary of a Secret Mission to Russian Central Asia in 1918. The introduction to the whole era was the excellent The Great Game: The Struggle for Empire in Central Asia (Kodansha Globe) and the eye opening Like Hidden Fire: The Plot to Bring Down the British Empire both by the eminently readable Peter Hopkirk.

This book is a combination travelogue and revolutionary thriller that, in important ways, is inadequate at both.

The geopolitical terrain of Central Asia is very different from what Paul Nazaroff saw when he fled Lenin's secret police almost a hundred years ago. Even some of the geographical terrain is different -- he describes Pishpek as tiny and run-down; today it is Bishkek, the capital of modern Kygyzstan, with a population of 900,000.

And the revolutionary thriller aspect of the book leaves out many of the details I would love to have seen. Nazaroff organized a major anti-Bolshevik uprising, but we don't know how or where or when: only that it failed, and forced the author to flee for his life.

But take the book for what it is, and not what it isn't. We have a unique, eye-witness account of Soviet abuses in Central Asia after the turn of the century. We have a picture of lands that even today remain largely unknown. We have a proto-ethnography of interesting groups of people (chiefly the Sarts and the Kyrgyz) and the world in which they lived. And we have them through the eyes of a man who loved nature, freedom, and the excellence of the human spirit (whether Russian, Turkoman or otherwise), and who was not afraid to decry the abuses and failings of the communists.

It is the story of a White Russian who was worked against the Bolshevik's during the Russian revolution. It provides chilling insight into the reign of terror but also fascinating information on life in Central Asia during the 1920's. Highly recommended

"Hunted Through Central Asia" by Paul Nazaroff is a very interesting tale that begins in 1918 of Nazaroff's time spent evading and ultimately escaping from the Bolsheviks in Soviet Central Asia, who were after him because he was a leading counter-revolutionary in the city of Tashkent and the surrounding area. Nazaroff comes across as an extremely intelligent and learned man, and also an incorrigible elitist. He was a trained geologist and mineral engineer but his expertise extended to zoology, botany, and ornithology among other things. This work is really a work of nature writing more than anything else given Nazaroff's constant digressions on the natural world. Additionally, Nazaroff must have recorded his impressions of the natural world while undertaking his journey and escape because it would be impossible for anyone to remember the details he does with clarity so many years later.

What the narrative lacks is dramatic tension or a sense of danger for the most part, especially in comparison to other escape narratives. The truly "close calls" seem few and far between. Also, Nazaroff's narrative could benefit from the addition of some nicely detailed maps of Russian Central Asia and far Western China as they were in 1918. The lone map provided in the text is poorly done and amateurish looking.

Nonetheless, "Hunted Through Central Asia" is a highly interesting look at life and the peoples who inhabit this remote part of Asia which was once part of the Imperial Russian Empire and the Soviet Union, as well as, a primer on the geology, flora and fauna of the region, and how life and society were in the process of drastic change under the strong arm of the Bolsheviks. What the narrative lacks in dramatic tension it compensates for with the inummerable details on all the aforementioned that do not escape Nazaroff's attention and discerning eye.